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Hi folks, this is Vaz here from thecrisvazshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, our latest things that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, for over 16 years, 2300 episodes, we've been getting the Chris Voss show. And boy, my arms are tired. I just flew in. No, I'm just kidding. We just did 8,500.
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Our latest entry into the author page, just making stuff up now, really, is the latest book to come out February 18th, 2025. How to get along with anyone. the playbook for predicting and preventing conflict at work. and at home john elliott and jim gwinn are going to be joining us on the show they're going to be talking to us about their latest insights on how you can avoid conflicts but where's the fun in that i mean
Isn't it better if we're at each other's throats? I don't know. Maybe. We'll find out. They'll be telling us. John Elliott is a doctor and PhD who mentors executives and advises professional sports teams, coaches, and athletes on how to apply individual. organizational psychological chain principles for enhancing health performance workplace culture and the bottom line he's consulted for NASA the US Olympic Committee and the Mayo Clinic only Microsoft another fortune 500
companies. Jim Gwynn is the president of the Resolution Resource Group, a training and development company that works with Fortune 500 companies, professional sports franchises, large-scale school districts, universities, large firms, and... governments on effectively handling conflict welcome the show gentlemen how are you both we're doing great you have all these you know insightful smart people on the show and then you have us too yahoo oh come on
One of you got a PhD, and I think another one, what's the ED? I'm not familiar with the term there, Jim. It's just so my wife will call me doctor. She's an amazing nurse, so that was my hope. Oh, really? Wow, okay. I did some of that when I was a kid, played doctor and nurse. Anyway, so give us .coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs and stuff? We're at The Conflict Docs, D-O-C-S.
Theconflictdocs.com. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside the book. I'll give you each a shot at it. So we'll grab it first and run with it. See, we're both a couple mediators, so we're like, no, you go first. You go first. Knock it off. 30,000 Put Overview is a whole background was in resolving conflict once it had escalated over a thousand divorces, a bunch of crazy conflict in a lot of places and decided.
Hey, can we get on the front end of that? Can we start to predict and prevent conflict before you have to come see us in mediation or in some of these other settings? Hey, can we equip people with some practical skills to head that off? And so that way it makes our job easier later.
And as you said earlier, if you're leading a life that's free of conflict, you're one boring human being. And help people flip the script and realize that conflict is healthy, is good, and at the end of the day is what you use to build relationships.
Now, is that just conflict or is that hand-to-hand combat? Oh, hand-to-hand combat is even better because then you get the workout component. Yeah, that's true. Big moves and blocking and all kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You make a lot of money. Yeah, I figure that's most marriage arguments, hand-to-hand combat. I've never been married, but that's what I hear. Anyway. With your spouse, you've got to make sure the furniture's out of the way.
That's true. Boy, one of you is married, evidently. That's because I went to a school that was a five to one girl to guy ratio. i proposed right before we got out and so she didn't know any better okay well that's that's the way to go i guess uh what what made you guys want to write this book why did you feel it was important
And so I know, you know, for us with all the trainings and stuff that we do, you know, we go do a training with a sports team or school district or church or business or whatever. And people come up after and be like, hey, so, OK, that's great with my coworker.
have this cousin, this roommate, this in-law. Will this work with my teenager? Because I don't know. And so much of what we do, it was, man, okay, it's business, corporate related, but these skills are... it's resolving conflict and for most of us that emotion it spikes more at home it spikes more friendships or relationships that was the that was the main focus uh anybody you want to jump in here
Yeah, you know, the practical applications to just the little ups and downs in life are far more important than resolving the big, hairy, emotional, crazy conflict. Yeah, that's important, right? You've got to deal with dealing with emergencies.
But most of us, the type of conflict we deal with are the little things that irk us from day to day. And having some practical skills you can put in place to either eliminate that stuff or deal with it efficiently. There aren't any good resources. And most resources are... you know, one size fits all or they're prescriptive. And at the end of the day, you know, we're all different. We've got funny quirks and peccadillos and, you know, people are sort of odd creatures.
And to have some tools to understand our differences, to use them to our benefit, we thought, you know, somebody's got to do something on that. Why don't we do it? Yeah. I mean, somebody's got to do something. And, you know, we live in kind of a... pretty polarized sort of environment right now especially with politics and you know people have trouble having you know family get-together sometimes for Thanksgiving and holidays lately these last
eight years or something and so you know we need we need some help we need some tools because you know social media doesn't seem to contribute very well to bring out the best in people like we thought it would it kind of backfired on us a little bit
think i don't know what do you guys yeah and it encourages people to to interact less or interact from a distance and not have that you know personal element that really matters and people getting along and and look you know you don't have to agree with someone you can have totally you know, opposite opinions. You can even say, yeah, I just don't really like that person very well, but doesn't mean you can't, you can't work together or have a meal together or so forth.
But, you know, you got to be open to being with people as opposed to, you know, staying in your little echo chamber in your man cave in your basement. Yeah. What's wrong with staying in your man cave echo chamber in your basement? You say that like it's a bad thing. Asking for a friend. Oh, we took shots at the Cowboys. It's a hard life. They've earned it. They have the same problem I Raiders do. The owners.
The owners of the problem. My dear friend Chip Kelly is coming to help. Yeah, yeah. We finally got some good... Are you talking about the Cowboys or the Raiders? Raiders. The Raiders, yeah. I know that we got that one really good coach. Yeah, offensive coordinator Chip Kelly. He won national championships in Oregon, went to the Eagles 49ers. He was the O coordinator at Ohio State. championship Raiders just plucked him for the OC. So a brilliant guy.
Grew up in New Hampshire, of all places, to get an offensive coordinator, but he's going to help. I'm looking forward to seeing what Raiders do. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up. This is some dream I'm having about the Raiders because we're paying four coaches right now, evidently. same time because we've made so many bad coaching deals. I think we're still playing
I think we're still paying Gruden to whatever. So anyway, yeah, it's the owners that are the problem. Brady contributes to the pool of paying people. yeah i mean he wants to be gmt he's gm2 or something right he's like trying to wear all the hats and stuff he even cleans the bathroom stall Tell us a little bit about each of you guys. How did you get into this field? How did you grow up? What influenced you? And how did you kind of develop these traits of getting along with others?
Sure, absolutely. My background, I'm weird. It was always in topic resolution. Most people are like, I don't want to deal with it. I'm like, hey, this sounds good. It sounds amazing. Your master's, doctorate, everything was all in mediation, resolving conflict once it escalated. And so it was...
Dealing with people once they're triggered, once they're at each other's throats and spending all that time and effort and energy trying to get them to calm down and come to a solution. I don't know if you can see it, but I had a 13-hour mediation. where I got shingles one time and realized, man, why are we, you know, dealing with conflict at that level is brutal. Can you start heading off on the front end? So that's what kind of influence influenced me.
Yeah, I grew up with a crazy dad who was a coach of the U.S. ski team in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And so I got to travel the world with a bunch of downhill skiers and ski jumpers and people living on the hairy edge. They would go down some beers and then go 80 miles an hour down a hill. And so I had some interesting role models in terms of this is how you handle challenges in life.
And then my dad got the 80 Olympics and had the, you know, he's friends with Herbie Brooks and got to sit in front row. Oh, wow. That team did. And so those are sort of my influences on, look, you know, we don't have to live a normal life and there are some interesting paths and we have to be a little bit crazy in what we do. But if we do, there's some there's some fun things out there for every one of us, regardless of our backgrounds. And so it led me down this crazy.
path of working in sports and dealing with big egos but sensitive people off camera. But the superstars on camera and I just sort of, you know, crazy path that introduced me to this guy and then got us into writing books. Is this the first book you guys have written together? First tag team. Yes, my service one together. There you go. You know, conflict is a big issue. One thing you guys talk about, and, you know, there's lots of...
It seems to be a rise in narcissism, and I hate to use that term much because it's overused. I think pretty much every date I hear from now tells me that they dated the last 10 narcissists, and only about 5% of people in there. the earth or clinically diagnosed as narcissist. But there's a lot of gaslighting that goes on right now, especially in politics or people. Sometimes you run into semi-narcissistic people. Social media has kind of done it to us.
But, you know, they'll gaslight you with bullshit. They'll argue some sort of thing like, you know, I mean, you have people arguing that the earth isn't flat. And we all know the earth is triangle. It's not round. It's not flat. It's a triangle. Right. So we all have to learn to agree. on something i'm just kidding people don't write me please don't start a cult with that but uh you know yeah when you have somebody you know who's arguing with the sky isn't blue
It can be hard to have an argument with those people. Does your book help that? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the kind of touch on both those points are awesome. So the one in terms of what are people really arguing about? Really argue that the sky is blue or they just want to argue? You know, are they really upset about this issue? It sounds like my first 10 marriages.
Or is it the other 16 issues before they got built up into this? And so one of the biggest things we focus on is, okay, what is the true trigger of this? process conflict is it over how things are done is control and then you know as you mentioned people claim oh i did a narcissist this person's narcissistic It could just be that this person truly is process triggered and they want things done a certain way. They want to be known that they are right.
versus a task-trigger person that they just want things done. They don't really care enough to argue about this. And so one of the biggest things our book focuses on is And if you recognize that first, there's practical techniques for dealing with process conflict triggered person versus a task triggered. So if we take a step back for a second. figure out what it is we're dealing with, there's some plays that we can play to make it easier.
We all have different styles and habits, and the clashes that come out where someone's going to dig in their heels and claim to you the sky is red and I can prove it to you, they dig in their heels for a reason. And knowing what style they are and what habits and knowing how to get past that. There's some practical tips that we thought, you know, that'd be really helpful because, you know, you can get caught in that loop.
of arguing sky color but it doesn't do anything for you and it's not doing anything for them either yeah so here's how to pivot from that The book will help guide you through that and figure out the different steps. There's another chapter that you talk about in your book on how to defuse emotion. I imagine emotion is a big player in this negotiation of how to get along with anybody because...
You know, a lot of people are emotionally connected to their ideas, especially conspiracy theorists are a good example. They're really emotionally connected to that stuff, which is probably why they're not using logic and reason. They're using emotion and what feels good.
good and and certainly you know i mean it'd be great if i could blame everything up on little green men running around from from martian land and lizard people politicians and we all know they're not green they're blue clearly right we all agree on that
see what i did there anyway i read the book i just assumed the sale but no i it's it'd be great if i could just blame everything on everyone else and there seems to be a lot of that that loves to go around right now where people don't take self-accountability it's almost
victimhood competition society how do you resolute some of that stuff where you know people are i don't know they're either looking for attention or validation or emotionally attached to something how do you get them detached from emotion do you Do you smack him over the head with the book? Is that what you should do?
Yeah, you know, it leaves a nice imprint and then the logo is valuable and we'll sign it. Resulting to violence is appropriate. As long as you buy the book. Don't do that. We're just kidding. In these sort of situations, you made a great point, right? Someone is not getting something they need. Their feelings have been hurt. They have some sort of need, some sort of validation, right? Their purpose in life, their meaning, right? Their contribution. They're not being hurt.
getting something. But because the argument and emotion spikes and people take it personally, neither side is understanding what is that fundamental need. And the key is bring that emotion down so you can identify that need and then you can help them get that. And even if you don't agree with their point of view, you're helping them get something that's being unfulfilled and then they're willing to talk to you.
Is that one of the things to look at? Instead of looking at this person like they have a dumb idea or they have an opposite argument, they're trying to fulfill something. And how can I help them fulfill what they're trying to fulfill without, you know... agreeing with them that the earth is, you know, shaped like a pizza. Absolutely. And so much of it is either, you know, does that person just need to vent? They just need to vent. They just need somebody to look and they need to talk or.
is that hey what they're arguing about is not really what they're pissed off about you know it really about something else and regardless we have a couple core techniques that are going to work in either situation to just immediately lower that emotion so we can start to assess which one of these two things is. Do they just need to be heard or are they really upset about something different?
Sometimes I mean sometimes you have a lot of that in inner sexual dynamics of what is the real argument about that? We're having you know and sometimes trying to get to what the core problem is one of the things one of the challenges I had as a CEO was especially with my
when you know their head would get polluted with some sort of home issue or some sort of issue they whatever it was they're having and I had to go in as a psychiatrist and try and figure out what's going on and mucking up their performance and really remove whatever it was from their brain basically um and and so yeah you had to go in and
You're like, okay, what's the real problem that's going on here? And people flail about. It's kind of interesting, and it makes it really hard to have discussions sometimes. Yeah, because sometimes the thing that's really bothering them, they're not comfortable sharing. They haven't spent some time.
you know thinking about hey you know it's okay to share this or you know frankly some people just need you know 30 second time out in between work and home and vice versa take a pause get reset get yourself focused on the new environment. And because of the pace of life, they don't take that minute to get themselves reset. And they need someone either to give them permission to get reset or help them do that reset.
I wish people were better at this sort of stuff, but it's kind of weird. It's maybe the one reason we never learn from our conflicts and what we do. What are some other... techniques you'd like to tease out that are in the book to tell people This is where we tap on two, two core ones. You know, the first one, my wife's so much smarter than me and knows me so well. And so my daughters that she sees through that completely. The second technique, I got away with it for, I think.
Nine, ten years? And then now she's, I'm out of tricks. So the first is, we call it the voice technique. So psychologically holding a higher tone of voice than someone else if they feel connected is very difficult to do. So one of the first things, you know, we... recommend is if you're in a conflict setting start to slow it down start to make that eye contact and the town where the mediations attorneys call it my Matthew McConaughey voice because it sounds like I'm going to say alright alright
you start to bring that voice down and calm and talk. And now I'm weird and we're both weird. So I love doing this with customer service agents. If they're from New York, I try and get them talking to West Texas. If they're West Texas, get them talking something else. but starting to lower that emotion by lowering that tone of voice, making good eye contact and asking clarifying questions is going to want to make people feel validated. You're asking them.
clarifying something they're saying, but they'll see it. They'll start to match your voice, which... It's a lot of fun. Fun to try out. You can get people talking in a British accent if you talk, because we have mirror neurons. We're designed to try and work together as groups, as a human species. And so people will pair it.
If you're talking slower, right, if you're more calm, people will pair it, and then they'll relax and they'll open up. Yeah. I see what you're doing. You're kind of leading with a little bit of NLP, neurolinguistic programming, where you're doing kind of... You know, you're kind of resetting the tone and resetting the speed. And I can see how that can work really well because you're taking the temperature down verbally and hopefully emotions will go down as well.
Yeah, without saying, hey, you need, you know, someone is, they're upset and they're waving their arms and they're talking fast. And you say, hey, you know, just slow down. People take offense to that, right? They'll do the exact opposite. Hey, don't tell me what to do. And so this way, you're not commanding them. You're not telling them whatever. You're just slowly guiding them in a way that's comfortable. How do you get people that...
are doing it for attention and validation constantly to stop doing it and recognize that they're doing certain things for attention and validation. Is there a way to get around that? This is where the detour technique comes in. It's a little bit of fun. The biggest thing with conflicts is there's always multiple issues, even if most of them are smokescreens. We make up stuff that justifies our position.
daughter is is so brilliant and yeah i got a doctorate yeah i do this for a living she got away with it for six months of telling me but daddy i'm scared And I'd say, baby, don't be scared. Like, daddy's here. And she'd make me do whatever she wanted. I didn't catch it until she was scared of pants on the way to church. And so we grew up with all of these issues and smoke screens and all of these things.
to justify, but there's always core issues for the most important. So one of the things we recommend is, okay, if somebody's starting to get too hot, if that emotion's starting to spike, a reason's starting to lower, maybe they're doing it for attention seeking. calmly ask them a question about another issue they mentioned what they'll have to do is they'll have to stop think pivot and then get ticked off again and then we
We just detour over to the next question, next question. So it works because we're interrupting them. We're telling them, we're talking about something they are upset about. So we're validating that, but we're making them pivot and go in different directions so we can keep doing that.
And each time they pivot, they've got to pause, they've got to think. That slows them down. That brings more rational thinking back in. And if they're just yelling and screaming for attention and you get them to pivot, eventually they're talking about something that isn't attention-seeking.
That's gone. They let it go. Asking questions. I like that because, you know, it shows that you're interested in what they're talking. You're trying to understand. You're seeking to understand, you know, if you're arguing with them, you know, you're just trying to off put what they're.
saying as opposed to listening and you can you can you can kind of start to control the narrative there's several people you talk about your book the avoider the competitor the analyzer the collaborator and the accommodator Do you want to maybe touch on a couple of those? And is that the style of person I need to know who I'm arguing with, I guess? Yeah, essential. And Jimmy can give you some breakdown. But the key is recognize when we get our buttons pushed.
when we're stretched, when someone pisses us off, when we're late, when we're out of our comfort zone, we tend to fall into one of five habits. We tend to fall in one of these styles. So we call them conflict styles. We call them go-to styles, like a picture. in the ninth inning when you need an out, you go to a pitch.
These are the habits, the behaviors that you have that you go to when you're in high leverage situation. As you know, if someone's in a tough situation or they're pissed off, if you know what style, you know what go to they're going to go to, you have a huge advantage. Wow.
Absolutely. And with the disclaimer being that some people are different, work a different home. We're not saying that most people resonate with a couple of these, but this is when you're triggered. When that emotion spike, what's that default style you reach to? To mention one of the biggest things is... Sure, know your own style, know what buttons get pushed, kumbaya, be a better person. But mainly it's, hey, can you assess the other person in a conflict? No, that person's an avoider.
These are the techniques I need to play. This is the style I need to match. And on these styles, you know, the avoider, that kind of has a misconception. They don't avoid conflict because they're scared of it. They don't avoid conflict because they don't like confrontation.
it's an opportunity cost analysis they're looking at it as i'm not going to deal with that until it escalates into a big issue and then i'm going to deal with it right now but i'm not going to deal with real conflicts unless i have to whereas a competitor
If they have an issue, you're going to know about it. If I'm upset with Chris or I'm upset with John, I'm going to tell him. I'm going to tell him what I think the solution should be. And let's go fix this right now. Let's Barney Fyfett nip it in the bud. Barney Fyfett. is that that's the first time i've heard that term Somebody grew up watching Andy Griffith's show. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Everyone.
Black and white TV, everyone that's cool. Anyway, I took a swipe at those millennials. So anything more we need to know about what you have there in the book? Let's talk about some of the wares that you guys have on your website, some of the consulting or coaching maybe. offer. Absolutely. So I think
The number one biggest thing, we talk in the book about how to assess someone and how to identify their style, some of the practical four-step checklists on how to do it. We also do have a scientifically validated assessment tool that you take, log on, quick and easy.
and it'll tell you what your profile is, but it takes it a step further. It's not just, okay, I'm a task trader avoider. It's, hey, here's my best teammate. Here's my worst teammate. And so in corporate settings, we'll come in, we'll assess a whole team and say,
Yeah, John and Jim are going to have some issues. And here's why I want to step in here. Just fire both of them now. Just fire them both. Hey, Chris and John would be best friends. And so we strongly recommend that before first dates. It's not awkward.
Just send it out and just say, hey, before we go out, let's see if you're an avoider or a collaborator. But we do have that on the site. We have it to where you can, if you purchase the assessment, you get a free book, purchase a book, get a free assessment. Someone at the bar picking up chicks, I can be like, hey, let's.
do this little game on my phone real quick we can give you a code for this for discount just for you and you know we're sports guys and so it it really gives you a scouting report you know tells you this is our and uh breaks it down and you get scouting report for all your your co-workers and scouting report for your spouse. I think you guys need to sell this to Tinder, man. This sounds like a good idea. Commission. Commission, Chris. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta, yeah, you gotta.
get some money from the tinder there they got some money over there i hear they're just getting sued right now yeah i mean they're built they're billion dollar business they own like there's one company that owns all the apps you should do that because i mean i I'm a single guy, you know, I've run dating groups. And so, yeah, we, any sort of qualification we can get, we need all the help. To weed out, to weed out. It's a minefield, if you will, of craziness. That being said.
Give us the .coms as we go out, guys, one more time, and then tell us where people can find you on the interwebs and give people your final pitch out. Yes, it's theconflictdocs, D-O-C-S, theconflictdocs.com. All kinds of resources and links.
That's sort of the hub for what we're doing. Absolutely. Got all the stuff on there and books on pretty much every major site to purchase. And you've got some big, crazy... thing going on in your life and your orgy group isn't getting along with each other, then call us.
group well you know and sometimes one finds a way to have conflict nowadays everyone seems to want to argue with everybody i think everyone's just miserable i think it's half the problem but i like how business for us i like how to master the five conflict styles I'm going to definitely do that. And if not, I just might resort to violence with the book. Don't do that, people. It's...
not what you should do. Never resort to violence. We need, you know, we need to learn as a society, talk things through. And this is why this book's important because, you know, we, we, we have too much violence going on and we have too much, just kind of adding.
each other's throat and we just argue with each other on social media and it might be better you know to one of my favorite lines is from abraham lincoln he said you know i don't like that gentleman i guess i should get to know them better Yeah, and so understanding each other better or maybe our journeys were on I know that trauma is a big issue a lot of times when I'm
either arguing or debating or analyzing somebody in the dating field as well. I'm looking for trauma, unresolved trauma. And that seems to be some triggers that happen with some people. They've, you know, they're in fight or flight mode over the trauma they have that's unresolved. Sometimes that can be an issue too as well.
Absolutely. And that's when I go, just go see a fucking therapist and leave me alone. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Our pleasure. It was wonderful to get to hang out with you. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. How to get along with anyone. Master the five conflict styles, the playbook for predicting and preventing conflict.
At work. At home. I know a lot of you married people probably need to. Make sure you buy the book there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out, guys.